Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/38

 30

S. FERENCZI

the return of certain painful thoughts; they are actually physical "displacement substitutes" for compulsive thoughts.

Obsessive actions are chiefly differentiated from the ucs and stereotypies by their greater complexity ; they are real actions that aim at the alteration of the external world (chiefly in an ambivalent sense) and in which narcissism plays no part or else a subordinate one.

A differential diagnosis of these motor symptoms is often only possible after prolonged psycho-analysis.